SUNDAY MORNING WALK

Off on my morning walk 

on the trails through the South Carolina

Botanical Gardens, accompanied by my camera.  

I keep thinking that the butterflies should have disappeared by now, 

but it seems that only the swallowtails that are diminishing in number each 

week.  The monarchs and fritillaries are still in abundance, and I'm still finding

many in the caterpillar stage.  So wonderful, this seasonal unfolding of beauty—of new life.

Shortly after making the image 

of the Monarch in the header photo,

I came across this Great Spangled Fritillary

enjoying breakfast on top of a zennia.  It was the tip of his 

wing catching the early morning  sunlight that caught my eye.

Down the trail a bit, 

I came across some of the last 

cherry tomatoes growing in a small garden.

This is a Gulf Fritillary, 

also munching on one of the 

many zinnias (which are great for

attracting butterflies).  Whenever possible, 

I try to photograph butterflies against a dark 

background in order to highlight their colors and designs.

Another Monarch.

The wing designs and

color placements are amazing.

Notice how the white dots on the 

edges of the wings are matched with white dots on the head and neck.

This image is not 

as crisp as I would like, 

but you can see that I discover

other types of weird creatures on my walks.

This is the back side

of a Gulf Fritillary feasting on a zennia.

 Another Monarch

A Few Parting Words

from

The Tao Te Ching

(translation by Ursula K. Le Guin)

The Way bears them;

power nurtures them;

their own being shapes them;

their own energy completes them.

And not one of the ten thousand things

fails to hold the Way sacred

or to obey its power.

Their reverence for the Way

and obedience to its power

are unforced and always natural.

For the Way gives them life;

its power nourishes them,

mothers and feeds them,

completes and matures them,

looks after them, protects them.

To have without possessing,

do without claiming,

lead without controlling:

this is mysterious power.

LaoTzu

EXTRAVAGANT GESTURES: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ANNIE DILLARD

If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.  After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor.  The whole show has been on fire from the word go.  I come down to the water to cool my eyes.  But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

What do I make of all this texture?  What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down?  The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is a possibility of beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf.  We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here.  Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, of it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.  It is that simple.  What you see is what you get.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them.  The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery . . .

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

THOUGHTS ON SOLITUDE AND THE LAST BUTTERFLIES OF SUMMER

I love to be alone.

I never found a companion

that was so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau

I need to be alone . . . 

I need the sunshine and the paving stones

of the streets without companions, without conversation, 

face to face with  myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Henry Miller

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone;

and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom;

for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Schopenhauer

I live in that solitude

which is painful in youth, 

but delicious in the years of maturity.

Einstein

Loneliness is the poverty of self;

solitude is richness of self.

May Sarton

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you,

even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,

and from it you will find all paths.

Rilke

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness.  It does not believe 

that I do not want it.  Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Mary Oliver

"Why I Wake Early"

Uncontradicting solitude

Supports me on its giant palm;

And like a sea-anemone

Or simple snail, there cautiously

Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Philip Larkin

In order to be open to creativity, 

one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.

One must overcome the fear of being alone.

Rollo May

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Wordsworth

MORNING WALKS, TIMELESS WISDOM

Never say there is nothing beautiful 

in the world anymore.  There is always something

to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

Albert Schweitzer

I took another walk this morning through the 300-acre South Carolina Botanical Garden, which, to my good fortune, is located less than half an hour from my house. As I had done in recent days, I took my camera and was primarily focused on capturing images of some of the butterflies that are abundant in this area this during July and August.  As I finished taking photos of the butterflies and began returning to my car, I turned around and saw these wonderful green, oval leaves that were backlit by the sun.  It was a truly magical moment, one of those luminous moments in which time seems to be literally suspended.  After a few minutes of absorbing what I was seeing, I shot the header photo, which turned out to be my favorite image of the day. 

Here are some of the other images I've taken in recent days — mostly butterflies and moths, but also a few flowers along the way.  I've also added some insightful words from others who, like me, find nature to be a perennial source of beauty, contentment, and joy. 

I only ask to be free.

The butterflies are free.

Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole

what it concedes to the butterflies.

Charles Dickens

Bleak House

Happiness is like a butterfly:
the more you chase it, the more it will elude you,
but if you turn your attention to other things, 
it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Henry David Thoreau

It seems to me that the natural world
is the greatest source of excitement; 
the greatest source of visual beauty;
the greatest source of intellectual interest.
It is the greatest source
 of so much in life that makes life worth living.

David Attenborough

Deep in their roots, 
all flowers keep the light.

Theodore Roethke

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

R.H. Heinlein

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven
unless it be through Earth's loveliness.

Michelangelo

I embrace emerging experience.

I participate in discovery.

I am a butterfly.

I am not a butterfly collector.

I want the experience of the butterfly.

William Stafford

The temple bell stops
but I still hear the sound
coming out of the flowers.

Basho

I dreamed I was a butterfly,
flitting around in the sky;
then I awoke.  
Now I wonder:
Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly,
or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

Chuang Tzu

When you take a flower in your hand
and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.
I want to give that world to someone else.
Most people in the city rush around so,
they have no time to look at a flower.
I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

Georgia O'Keefe

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we would rise up rooted, like trees.

Rilke

The earth laughs in flowers.

Emerson

It is written on the arched sky;
it looks out from every star.
It is the poetry of Nature;
it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

John Ruskin

Nature is not a place to visit.
It is home.

Gary Snyder

I go to nature to be soothed,
and healed,
and to have my senses put in order.

John Burroughs

The butterfly counts not
months but moments,
and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore

Nature never deceives us;
it is we who deceive ourselves.

Jean-Jacque Rousseau

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

Lord Byron

NOTES FROM A DELINQUENT BLOGGER

Ruby Throated Hummingbird (Female)

I'm rather shocked to see that my last posting on this blog was May 26th, almost three months ago.  My absence during this period was not planned.  I've simply been spending almost every summer hour in the great outdoors, far away from my digital devices.  There is one exception, however.  I have taken my camera with me every day, whether out for long walks or exploratory drives through the countryside. For whatever reason, my orientation this summer has been more visual than verbal, and the natural world has drawn me deeper and deeper into both its beauty and its mysteries.

That said, I will simply let some of my summer photographs speak to where I've been and what I've been doing for the past few months.  

Silhouette of Blue Dasher Dragonfly

Fixated on Distant Light

Spicebush Swallowtail

on Lantana Bush

Barred Owl, Heard Nightly 

and Finally Sighted in my Front Yard

Lily Pads After Rain in a Pond

at Bellingrath Gardens, Near Mobile, Alabama

Other Lily Pads in Same Pond,

Tweaked to Portray My Sense of How

Van Gogh Might Have Painted the Scene

Ruby Throated Hummingbird (Female)

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

Wary Male Cardinal

From the Lily Pond at Bellingrath Gardens

Spicebush Swallowtail

Ruby Throated Hummingbird (Female)

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest.  It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

David Attenborough